SteamOS will really help Linux on desktop – Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds praised Valve’s efforts to develop Linux based SteamOS and bring great gaming experience to living rooms. Speaking at LinuxCon in Edinburgh, Linus said that he is happy the way Valve is going and hopes that this will push others to take Linux seriously.

Last year Linus was heard badly criticizing Nvidia for their poor support of Linux drivers. However, with Valve announcing SteamOS and porting Steam and some of its games to GNU/Linux, Nvidia developers have recently fastened up developments and are now more approachable to community and Linux users.

I love the Steam announcements – I think that’s an opportunity to really help the desktop – Linus Torvalds

“I’m not just saying it’ll help us get traction with the graphics guys,” he said. “It’ll also force different distributors to realise if this is how Steam is going, they need to do the same thing because they can’t afford to be different in this respect. They want people to play games on their platform too. It’s the best model for standardisation, I think good standards are people doing things, saying ‘this is how we do it’ and being successful enough to drive the market.”

SteamOS was announced by Valve last month. Any user will be able to download and install the operating system on their machine. Also, Valve is currently collaborating with different hardware manufacturers to bring Steam consoles powered by SteamOS in market.